[ applause ] [ bells tolling ] ♪ >> we go up this beautiful mountain. this incredible town. it goes back to the 12th century. people trudge up the hill to the beautiful church to take the walk that michael corleone took. now and forever more it will be "the godfather" theme park where they are playing "the godfather" theme over and over. >> i think most thoughtful sicilians are disgusted by this. ♪

>> imagine not waking up every day. >> as one bus after another filled with japanese tourists go up there, oh, look, michael corleone got married there. oh, it's so fantastic. ♪ i took a walk through this beautiful world ♪ ♪ felt the cool rain on my shoulder ♪ ♪ found something good in this beautiful world ♪ ♪ i felt the rain getting colder ♪ ♪ sha la la la la ♪ sha la la la la la la ♪ sha la la la la ♪ sha la la la la la la

♪ >> it's one of the most beautiful places in europe, a place whose roots are very much the roots of the town where i live, but somehow i've never been able to get it right. to tell the story, any story of sicily. it's the biggest island in the head -- mediterranean. two main towns of palermo and catania on opposite sides. i'm done a show in palermo before. it was an epic goat rodeo, an failure of humiliating scale. this time i was going to get it right. there's the sicily we know from films, an evocative, deeply felt history that's not quite reality but cool anyway, right? there's the simple fact of its location, tucked away under the boot of italy, part of but not really part of that country. its own language, culture, its own history of norman, arab,

spanish, roman, turkish, egyptian interlopers, all leaving their mark and their influence. i grew up in new jersey which was pretty much sicily on the hudson. the italian-americans next door weren't from milan, i could tell you that much. i guess what i'm telling you is i figured this will be easy. villa moraci, a certified hotel, restaurant and working farm that in this case produces olive oil. >> how many acres of property do you have? >> about 40 acres. it's one of the oldest organic farm in the mountains. >> this is guido, the proprietor. wow. so that's where potatoes come from. how freakin' hard can it be to make an awesome show in sicily?

eat the nice food, drink the wine. in an idyllic village in the countryside, outside catania. how low impact can it get? so the plan was we go fishing. we get some fresh octopus, maybe some cuttlefish and explore the bounties of surrounding waters, all while working on our tans. with a local chef, fishermen, man of the sea. he's experienced. he knows where to get it good. >> you like the ocean? >> i love it. >> how do you see it in italian? >> ricci. >> one of my favorite things to eat. >> this is ture, my host. what else is out there? is there octopus? >> octopus and also cuttlefish. and i want to try and find some abalone and the bucce and small clams.

i think they will be really full. >> i'm thinking really? are these prime fishing waters? i don't know about this. all the boat traffic and all these people and so close to the action i can't see much of anything living down there. >> okay. we anchor here. >> but i am famous for my optimism, so i dutifully suited up for what was advertised as a three-hour cruise. ♪ so i get in the water, and i'm paddling around. and splash. suddenly there's a dead sea creature sinking slowly so the seabed in front of me. are they kidding me? i'm thinking can this be happening? splash. there's another one. splash, another rigor mortis half-frozen freakin' octopus but it goes on. one dead cuttlefish, octopus,

frozen sea urchin after another, splash, splash, splash. each specimen drops among the rocks or along the sea floor, to be heroically discovered and proudly shown off to camera, like i'm not actually washing as the confederate in the next boat over hurls them into the water one after another. i'm no marine biologist, but i know dead octopus when i sea one. pretty sure they don't drop from the sky and sink straight to the bottom. >> how many do we have? three? >> yeah. >> okay. >> i tried to get some patate now and also small abalone. >> strangely everyone believes the hideous sham unfolding before our eyes, doing their best to ignore the blindingly obvious. >> don't swim at it.

>> then they gave up and dumped the whole bag of dead fish into the sea. at this point i begin desperately looking for signs of life, hoping that one of them would stir, become revived. i'm frantically swimming around the bottom littered with dead things looking for one that's still twitching so can i hold it up to the camera and end this misery, but, no, my shame will be absolute. for some reason i feel something snap, and i slide quickly into a spiral of near hysterical depression. is this what it's come to, i'm thinking, as another dead squid narrowly misses my head? almost a decade later back in the same country, and i'm still desperately staging fishing scenes, seeding the oceans with supermarket seafood, complicit in a shameful, shameful incident of fakery.

but there i was, bobbing listlessly in the water. dead sea life sinking to the bottom all around me. you've got to be pretty immune to the world to not see some kind of obvious metaphor. i've never had a nervous breakdown before, but i tell you from the bottom of my heart something fell apart down there and it took a long, long time after the end of this damn episode to recover. ♪

>> raw clams, abalone and a heart-warming beach scene surrounded with a gaggle of curious kids. it was at this point time for ture to redeem himself. you'll notice, i'm not there. i'm sitting in a nearby cafe pounding one negrone after in a smouldering miserable rage.

our evening meal will be at ture's place which is just up the hill in turmina, but by the time dinner rolls around i'm rip to the -- did i mention it's my birthday. are couple hours on a boat, a couple more hours getting looped and a couple more hours on the restaurant so i'm gone, baby, gone. so i don't remember any of this. any of it. >> so how is your day today? >> good. a nice boat trip. a little swim. >> i would be told later that a gentleman named tomaso joined me for dinner and also someone on the crew mentioned that his wife was present and that she didn't say much. preferably because this wasn't her preferred way to spend her birthday. >> hi. >> tony. >> this is my passion. i like to find the old variety of olive, and one of this is white. >> so that's original.

>> original. >> you don't find it anyplace else. >> apparently there were these white olives harvested from some secret tree only ture knows about. maybe it's next to his secret fishing hole. there was great sicilian wine apparently, and apparently i drank quite a lot of it. there was bread and olive oil, abalone served raw in the shell, baby sardine, also served raw with a splash of citrus and salt. >> and this is the baby sardine, totally raw without no match ingredients to taste better the fish. salud. >> thank you. >> if you ask a sicilian, right, say where you come from? the correct answer should be i'm italian. >> right. >> we say i'm sicilian. >> is sicily, italy? >> yes. >> should it be? >> i don't know, but we used to have influence from britains,

normans, arab, spanish, so basically we are a mix. we're a blender. >> oh, look, my octopus. i remember personally catching that one. it was a mighty struggle, too. no, actually i don't. >> octopus. >> pretty, beautiful little shrimp. very tender, the octopus, very nice. >> and another traditional specialty. i'm told they call this tuna tartar. and cuttlefish, i recognize you, my friend. how traditional is this to sicily? >> i think from the part of the sea they almost eat a roll. >> yes. >> but fisherman only, fishing communities only or in restaurants? >> no. >> always as long as you could arrived, you see crudo like this? >> i see it in poor families. >> the japanese sort of gave everybody permission to eat traditional foods, their own

traditional foods. what are the great mother sicilian classic dishes? >> the anchovy. anchovy and parmegiana. >> that's with the sardine. >> but it's an explosion of flower, because it's arab. born in the period when sicily was very poor. >> this i like. i even remember it. pasta, a true sicilian classic made with fennel, pine nuts, saffron and anchovy. serving alongside some sardines that have been curing in chestnuts and salt for days then lightly fried in oil. >> we have to use our hand, use our hand to eat the fish. >> no problem. i must have shrunk back to bed somehow, collapsed in a sodden drunken heap of self-loathing.

i would ordinarily have turned on a porn channel and loaded up on prescription meds but there's no tv at the agri tourismo.

i love the films "godfather 1" and "godfather 2" but they had nothing to do with any organized crime from reality. they're opera. magnificent opera. but basically a morality tale about loyalty and destroying the things that you claim to love and want to protect. actual organized crime members and literally speaking a bunch of lazy ass sociopaths who have no problem stealing from their own harder working neighbors. here in sicily they are interested and less glamorous than gambling and prostitution. they are and have traditionally

been a gigantic pair sit call organization, one that has now grown to be of mere equal size to its host. mary is originally from new york, but she's been living here in palermo for half a century now. she's a food writer and at one time a reformer for social justice which is a dicey thing to be here. you've been here all this time? why? >> well, i came for a year. it was going to be a year between college and graduate school. i just finished college. i met a man, and therein lies the why. i married a sicilian and have been here ever since. >> piccolo napoli, a restaurant like a lot of others around here except for the quality of its food. tell me about where we are, first of all. >> the father and mother of the present owner opened this in

1951 when there was a wonderful photograph there on the wall of the opening day. it started as a tavern and has become a well-known and much appreciated restaurant now. it's very straightforward sicilian cooking at its best. >> we start with some typical things, the kind of things i deeply love, the kind of simple good things that make me happy. panelli which is a fritter made from chickpeas, caponata, a sweet and sour eggplant dish, kind of like ratatouille but more arab in its influence, a plate of olives and white wine produced from a small batch vineyard run by mary and her husband. this is a panelli? >> chickpea flour that comes in with the arabs, maybe even earlier, because chickpeas have been around for a long time. >> and this is the famous caponata and about as sicilian as it gets. >> caponata and cannoli are the two internationally known sicilian dishes.

>> this is what i've been waiting for. this is what i wanted sicily to be, something to soothe my shattered soul. it doesn't take much, a bowl of good pasta. in this case the famous spaghetti al nero di sepia, spaghetti and cuttlefish ink, also pasta with swordfish, eggplant, and tomatoes. oh, beautiful. perfect. perfect pasta. very happy with that. >> good. i know you've been looking forward to it so i'm glad it's good. it's an expensive city for some things because the consumer is paying. >> more. >> more so that the store can afford to pay its extortion

money. the big change that has happened is that up until the mid-'80s, the late '80s, there were a great many sicilians who thought if they were honest and didn't have anything to do with the mafia, they could live without being affected by the mafia. apparently 80% of the businesses in palermo and 70% in the rest of italy that pay extortion. >> that's a lot. >> that's a lot. >> but not everybody pays the bite. a small but growing coalition of businesses have joined a group, a grass roots organization taking a stand against the mafia's traditional mere total control over the food chain, from farm to table. i come out of the restaurant business in new york. you got taxed with every laundry order every time they took your trash away. it was built in to all your basic services. >> here it's much more going around. christmas and easter. >> guy comes by. >> the guy comes by. >> it's plain and simple

extortion. >> given that that's a pretty straightforward situation, some of these guys who banded together, what happens, the guy shows up and says i'm not paying you. what happens next? >> well, apparently now the mafia has decided that it isn't worthwhile bothering with the people who belong to the group. there's so many others out there and why look for trouble. how true it is, i don't know. >> right. >> to belong to the group, you have to sign a pledge that you will not pay and that if you are approached, will you go to the police. >> right. >> then they send you to lawyers and to another organization which deals with the people who are actually having trouble. it's incredibly complicated. i mean, there are no easy answers. >> right. >> what about big farm? what about some of the things that are -- that are happening on a much more legitimate level? >> i mean, who is more

destructive worldwide? you can make a very good argument. >> that's horrible. i'm upset because i sound as if i'm making apologies for the mafia. it's just i think what has happened, that having lived 50 years in sicily, i'm much more skeptical than most americans. >> right. >> i don't know. >> i know what you're saying. you're saying you're not so sure that a mafia-free italy would be that much more functional? >> absolutely. >> i'm not so sure. >> i'm not so sure at all. but i am constantly amused by the fact that 45 years ago, if i said to americans oh, i live in sicily. sicily, how did a nice girl like you end up in a place like that. >> really. >> now it's oh, on a farm in sicily, how romantic. oh, i envy you. so perception of sicily -- >> it has changed. >> it has changed. enormously. enormously. >> in 2007 there were only 160

group members, and now over 800. pretty cool considering we're talking about a group who have demonstrated no regret or hesitation in killing judges, politicians, police, prosecutors. back to catania, and when you're talking late-night dining options, you're talking one thing, the enticing smell of smoke wafting through the streets, a smell that's enticingly equine. i smell rainbow dash. >> yes, yes. yes. >> anthony and marco, a couple of sicilians and aficionados. >> this is one of the older side, famous, you know, families of mafia that grows in crime organization here.

>> oh, right here? >> yeah, yeah, yeah. >> nowadays seems to be like a bit more quiet because they are all getting arrested so they prefer to sell meat against drugs. >> so right over there you can bet on a horse. >> we can bet horses, yes. >> bet horses, and here you eat the one that lose. >> right. >> the loser goes on the fire. that's not a nice thing, but, i mean, sometimes it happens for real. >> cycle of life. >> all right. [ speaking foreign language ] >> so why horse? where does this tradition come from? >> from arabs. maybe also egyptians. and then we have greek, 750 years before christ. then we have romans. because we have to say sicilians are big bastards.

of course, we're being conquered by everybody. also our dialect. there are many words that are understood by other people. if i say sicilian dialect word, maybe an arab can understand me, and italian no. and the italian language comes from latin, something different. we are sicilians before italians, remember this. >> i'll never forget. >> look at this side of the meat. it's yellow, it's not white. when it's yellow, it means that the horse has been breed eating fresh grass. >> tear and go. >> yeah.

>> you like the taste? >> it's good. >> it's a bit sweet. >> you don't need nothing. horse meat. basically it's loved by quite everybody here. you know. we have it for meat balls, and we can have a horse meat ball. >> as you wish. whatever. i'll try anything. >> make some different things, you know. >> bread, parmesan cheese, pecorino. >> right. >> parsley, eggs, and, of course, horse. >> horse. >> it is very tasty. let's put it this way, when my daughter asks me for a pony, i'm bringing her here and asking for a grill and saying here's your [ muted ] pony.

this national park and within a free range pig farm. they breed special heritage pigs here, the black boar. a combination of wild sicilian boar and domesticated swine thought to be brought here from spain long ago, this breed of pig is raising the profile of the pig here.

>> the smell of -- everywhere, yeah. look, look, here now, the noise. the car. they will arrive. fantastica. >> like any good-tasting high-quality pig, the secret is largely what were they fed? how did they live? were they happy? >> i'm a hunter. i've never seen so many in once. it's like i feel -- >> you should be shooting something. >> yeah. >> a poorly fed pig who lived his life in squalor, stress and fear makes for bad pork. this is why we should treat animals well, not just because that's the nice thing to do, but because it makes them provably more delicious. >> chestnuts, acorns, roots and

stuff foraged from the hills, supplemented by some nice fattening grain during the winter months when wild food is less easy and less plentiful. >> they catch here the animal. only with the trap. >> right. >> it's a shame that they don't let you shoot. >> i like pigs. not to hang out with, to eat. i don't have a tattoo of a pig or anything, but i like them fine, and when given the opportunity to shoot one in the brain or see one shot in the brain so that i may suck on its entrails and other parts, i'm down. that's what is called cheering me up from some manic depression. >> bang, and this pig is like pauly, you won't see him no more. even with the brain dead, the heart still goes on beating, sort of like pick a kardashian. in the case, however, the last

few beats of the heart are absolutely necessary to pump all that red, red, crave in a bucket for sanguinacco. looking good. there's a kardashian joke there somewhere. kim gets ready for the big day. it's date night at khloe's house. veal housewife gets ready for summer. grooming tips from theresa guidice. i got a million of them. let's hope kanye never has to see this. >> we hang now. >> bye. >> then get to work. >> okay.

>> very fast. >> all those good bits, the lungs, kidneys, they get cooked slowly in fat with garlic, chili pepper, a little wine. is the meat also the liver? >> all the interior with a little bit of fat? that's a pork confit. oh, that's pretty. meanwhile the intestinal casings get filled with blood and gently poached until creamy bloody delicious. and a nice spread of homemade cured meats, local cheese and homemade wine. let the party begin. >> so, what do we have here? let's identify these products. capicola. >> capicola, prosciutto.

lardo. pancetta. oh, that looks good. >> the cheese is local, provolone. this is the ricotta and just cooked in the oven. >> the bread. >> the bread is from the ankle, and they have also salami and they have sausages. >> and this cheese? >> canestrato. >> and what do you call that dish? >> just in the pan. >> beautiful. >> oh, it's good. >> best moment of the day. >> indeed. >> oh, yeah.

>> what did you think about? >> it's good. for me the ricotta, it's really good. >> i think it's a complete country, this place. you discover sicily and i think that very few people know. this is incredible. even the bread, is the old lady, that she made. >> oh. you think of sicily, you think of family, you think of food. this is more like it.

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♪ >> we'll stop here. >> catania, the early morning market. it's been going on for longer than america has as a country. it's old, old italia. do they know you here? do you shop here often? >> yeah. >> this is not tomaso's first trip to the market by a long shot. his mom is a regular. she comes here almost every day. >> thanks. >> and this is the next stock . you can find here everything. each butcher, more likely they have their own specialty. fresh ingredients, you know. >> they do lamb. >> lamb, sausage and hamburger.

this is at least six months old, at least. over here. this is the place where she buy the spices for her home, and the veggies. >> this is what the market is best known for, seafood. >> bongiourno. this one is one of the biggest reseller that we have in the fish market. can you see also the variety. >> yeah. >> we consider the tuna like a pig. we don't throw away anything. >> see, this is typical. you can find it here. >> oh, those are the tiny, tiny little clams. >> right. >> yes. >> you can see the shrimp are normally still alive.

>> so i see sepia. baby -- baby sword fish. i'm joining tomaso for lunch today. mom's cooking, so we've got to do some shopping. >> bongiourno. >> they look beautiful. >> yeah. >> the color is beautiful. >> and bongiourno. >> so we'll go have some today, so shrimp. >> and baby sardines. >> i'll tell you. >> what do you want to try? >> blood sausage? >> just blood, no onion, no

spice, nothing? a little salt. >> whoa, whoa, whoa. >> oh, a little pepper. >> si. >> you squeeze it. >> no, no, no. >> oh, man. >> interesting runner up. >> oh, that's good. usually i don't like tripe plain. i like in the a sauce and a little spicy. that's very tasty. looks like hell. tastes like heaven. if you like this, you're sicilian. ♪

♪ i don't have any grandparents. my mom, i guess she cooks, but last time she ever invited me for dinner was, like, 1972. so given that dysfunctional, tragic, too much information kind of history, is it any

mystery why i'm on the lookout for a grandma? anybody's grandmother's would do. i've been known to hitch-hike highways looking for any grannies and given my fragile emotional sense it makes sense that i would dragoon tomaso's mom into making me a lunch. is that heart warming or, like, creepy and sad? >> smells good in here. >> wine in the meantime. cheers. >> cheers. >> need any help chopping parsley? >> oh, perfect. for lunch we've got the shrimp and sardines from earlier at the market, but first this. just grab one? it's like arancini but with hollowed out potatoes. filled with cheese, breaded and fried. >> delicious. >> basically, and with all the cheese. >> and deep in and sealed the

potato and crumb bread and fried. >> my mother cooks for everybody, even if it was midnight and it was with my friends. >> right. >> so when we have to share all together and have a dinner, my mother is cooking for everybody. because the problem is when she cook, even if she know it's only for five people, she cooking for ten. >> just in case. this is sicily, after all. this is the classic starter. also a bread and tomato salad. >> would you like to try something? >> that's old school. >> we use bread that a harder. we usually do bread that is two days old. >> it's really good. really, really good. that's sicily right there. >> right. yes.

>> fresh shrimp sautes in butter and garlic. >> i've noticed over time that every great and enlightened culture when confronted with a shrimp or a prawn, right away. >> that's the way you see if it's fresh or not. >> so typical day, when you were 15 years old what did you eat for lunch? >> never missing pasta for lunch. >> pasta and meat? or pasta and fish. >> fish and pasta. basically you have to go right behind the corner to find your products. whatever we could produce in sicily, that's what we choose to buy. >> watch this. zip the bone right out. out comes all the bone. who needs a knife? >> sardines fileted neatly, sauteed in garlic and oil. a little red pepper. it's a beautiful thing right there. good. i'll tell you, another two hours here i'll be speaking italian.

well i'll be speaking sicilian. you have to eat it hot. this is very nice. if you don't like this, there's really no hope for you. >> there's something you don't like it? >> everything is fantastic. so happy. this is a delicious meal. and to eat in this beautiful home with some really good home cooked food.

♪ my last night in sicily. after this i'm going back to new york, going back to bed and adopting the fetal position for, like, six weeks. i may look normal -- okay, i don't exactly. but i'm not barking or shrieking with my pants wrapped around my head which is what my instincts are telling me i should be doing. one of life's great joys is cheese. no, i'm eating cheese. which makes me happy. always. and drinking wine. good wine. and a hell of a lot of it. and i'll just make it over the hump with any luck at all. we have a mozzarella here, a pepperccino. >> we'll start with the one in the middle.

tori joins me for a final meal. along with antonio, guido and guido's girlfriend, anna. this is an agritourismo. this is not a concept that exists in america, but it is a concept that should exist. okay, now please explain what it is. >> a hotel linked to the territory. you have to use local product, local recipe. >> penne, sun dried tomatoes all from the farm. oh, man that looks good. >> wow. fantastic. >> some nice rabbit, olive oil, also from the farm. more wine. i might just make it.

this is called agridolce. it's bitter. if you talk about italy, it is the most interesting part of italian cuisine. not just gastronomically but philosophically. it's a philosophical thing. life is too good. i need a little bitterness to remind myself of the internal tragedy of our existence. >> the sweet and sour of the life. >> one final attempt before i go to extract something meaningful on what it means to be sicilian. >> what's wrong with these people in the north? >> people from the south are coming from these greek culture where the philosopher while in the north came through and -- >> that's the harshest, meanest thing anyone can say. oh. >> and figured out the last century, the three best writers

in italy are from sicily. >> because they consider us a weight with our problems. but finally in summers, they all come here to make millions. it's a good thing for us, you know. >> in the end, it all comes back to the godfather. we go up this beautiful mountain, this incredible town. it goes back to the 12th century. there are few places on earth more beautiful. but we are sitting in one of the -- it was like a godfather theme park. look michael corleone got married there. it's so fantastic. >> you know, we just look at people with the godfather t-shirt. and say oh, my god. why people get stuck on this, i love the "godfather" movie because this was sense of family. >> michael had many options. he destroyed his family. and everything he touched.

>> in a way it's fair. >> it's fair? >> a good movie. >> coppola, he didn't [ muted ] it up? >> no. hello, everyone, tonight, a cnn special, "making the case." we break them down case by case. we start with breaking news tonight. we learned that two convicted murderers on the run have been captured. they were serving life sentences in florida but just walked out of prison. we will go to florida with breaking news on their capture. and a young woman's lifeless body is found in the bathroom. her husband is on trial accused of drugging and drowning her so he could be with his mistress.